I can’t quite believe that my three-year term as Chair of STEP’s UK Practice Committee has reached its end! I was extremely honoured to have held the position, which opened my eyes to the great lengths that STEP members will voluntarily go through to assist fellow TEPs and share their breadth of knowledge.

Guidance notes, blogs, articles, leaflets, webinars, lobbying, consultation responses, surveys and meetings with officials are just a few of the things that we as a committee get involved with.

If you were a fly on the wall at our last committee meeting you would have seen that the new Law Commissioner for property, family and trust law attended to introduce himself and tell us about his new role. We welcomed back representatives of the Law Commission who updated us on the wills project and discussions were had regarding the project’s focus as well as the future Law Reform programmes. Furthermore, members of the committee will shortly be drafting a range of articles covering a plethora of topics; ranging from the pitfalls of acting as trustee, monies passing by nomination without safeguards, issues surrounding family bank accounts and business practice generally.

I would like to personally thank the volunteers who sit on the committee and work tirelessly for the members to add value for the TEP. The committee is a made up of a mix of individuals from across the UK with differing specialisms and interests. We are fortunate to have luminaries of the speaker circuit, authors and editors of our favourite ‘go-to’ guidance books and the (just as important) practitioners on the ground who know the issues facing us day to day as a reality. Each member brings something unique and invaluable to the table. See who is involved at www.step.org/uk-practice-committee.

We are of course always looking for fresh ideas, so if there is anything that you would like for us to be involved with or indeed if you would like to contribute to the cause yourself then please do get in touch via our dedicated email address: [email protected].

I am a great believer in keeping things fresh and promoting new ideas. In order to achieve this there naturally needs to be a change of order and I am thrilled to be passing on the baton to Kelly Greig for the next term and look forward to seeing what these changes bring as a continuing member of the committee.

Keep an eye out for our posts on the STEP website and in the News Digests to see what we are up to next…

 

Cheryl Farnham TEP is a Director of Arcadia Legal & Trust Ltd and sits on the UK Practice Committee, England and Wales Regional Committee and West of England Branch Committee.